Burning Angel Wings To Dust
by Gray Doll
Summary: "She spins and laughs at the blood red sky, wondering if Patrick can hear her." / middle ages & forward vampire AU, because the idea was just too tempting /
1. Red John

**Notes:** Okay, so this is... different. Well, to make things a bit clearer – this is, more or less, a vampire AU, set in the past. I don't know what prompted me to write this, the idea just wouldn't leave my mind. So pretty much almost everything that comes with vampires comes with this, including lots of blood, immortality, biting, and things like that. Fun stuff. Perhaps there'll be a second and a third chapter, more Teresa & Patrick-centered, I really don't know yet. If you'd like a continuation, please let me know!

This is dedicated to the wonderful LetMeWalkTheEarthWithYou, for being amazing and writing amazing stories and being amazing (did I say that already?).

* * *

'Take me, cure me, kill me, bring me home  
Every way, every day, I keep on watching us sleep  
Relive the old sin of Adam and Eve, of you and me  
Forgive the adoring beast' - Nightwish

* * *

**Burning Angel Wings To Dust**

**I.**

It's midnight, and he sits alone; waiting.

The small room is dark and derelict, illuminated only partially by a small candle, which burns weakly in flickering, halting gasps. Blood pools slowly on the wooden floorboards beneath his feet from the open throat a foot away. Its thick, acrid scent fills his nostrils, and his mind with thoughts of flesh and bone, sinew and gristle. But he does not act upon it. Instead, he waits.

On the single windowsill, a small, wooden device ticks away, whispering in its eerie, mechanical voice. _Tick, tock_. _Tick, tock_.

He sits back in his chair, folds his hands over one another, and listens. The drunkard in the hut next door has just hit his miserable wife so hard that she falls to the floor with a thump. Their child is crying (again). A pair of would-be lovers is meeting by the well, the boy whispering oaths he will not keep while the girl swoons and giggles. A snake is quietly winding itself up a tree, its mouth wide open and ready to strike an unwitting sparrow twittering on the branch in front.

Across the forest, beyond the farmlands, high above in an imposing castle on the hill, the young girl's breath is drawing shorter as each second passes. _Tick, tock_. Her maid is crying.

_Not long now_, he thinks, and he almost smiles.

The Count's daughter is about to die.

* * *

The maid comes at the first crack of dawn.

He's not surprised when the sound of knuckles against wood resonates in the quiet of the room. She knocks once, twice on the open door, and promptly steps in, her eyes downcast as she closes the door behind her and comes to stand a few feet away from him.

The woman keeps her head bent, strands of unkempt dark hair falling in front of her face. She swallows audibly, her fingers clenching and unclenching around the flimsy hat she's holding. The stench of her fear, overpowering and heady, fills the small, enclosed space.

"You're very brave to have come here," he says, his voice clear yet barely above a whisper. He has found, over the years, that it's the tone that makes people shiver with both fear and anticipation of what's to come. The woman's pulse jumps in her throat – he can see it, can almost taste the healthy blood running beneath, can hear the anxious thrumming of her heart. "Most would not dare attempt what you're doing now."

In the corner, the clock still hums away the seconds.

_Tick. Tock._

She straightens her back, forces herself to look him in the eye. She's thick around the middle, her hands hard and calloused from years of service to the Count's family. Her dark eyes are filled with dread and determination. "Most do not love as I do."

He laughs, low and soft. The woman shivers but does not avert her gaze – though he can see her hands trembling ever so slightly.

"You must be very devoted to your masters, then. This is an odd thing, I have to admit." She stays silent as he slowly stands, emerging from the shadows until the weak light hits his eyes. He towers over her; the maid comes only to his chest.

"Oh, I've heard, I've heard," he says, and she shudders. He can trace it, that subtle movement of her spine, that minute vibration of her bones, one after another until she's forced herself back to stagnation. "Your small, fragile mistress. The young girl, bed bound and suffering. For all we know, she might as well be dead already."

He knows she isn't. Not yet.

"We've done everything," the woman whispers, her gaze now imploring. She looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes, fear and restlessness swimming in their dark depths. She's terrified of him (_Death_, the Easterners called him; the Westerners do not dare speak of him at all), but she has nowhere else to go. "We've bled her, purified her, we've fed her powdered jewels. We've hired the finest physicians of the country. We've consulted self-proclaimed warlocks and priests. And all of them-" her voice cracks, "-they tell me my darling girl is going to die. That there is no hope, that she's too weak."

He nods his head, pretending to be deep in thought. For a moment, the pathetic little maid looks almost hopeful. "And what is it exactly that you want of me?"

She stops, gulps down a lump in her throat. Gathers her remaining courage. "They call you the devil," she whispers. "They say you're evil. They say you're a murderer and a beast, Satan's servant in the flesh. But – they say you can cure her."

He chuckles, his breath tingling the woman's skin; he can see goosebumps erupt across her ebony flesh, but she does not move an inch.

"I am not a physician, woman. Nor do I monger the kind of medicine your priests endorse."

She sets her mouth, takes a deep breath. "I know."

He smiles down at her, resisting the urge to run his finger down her cheek just to watch her flinch. Of course, he had known she would come. He had known she would not leave until she thought he'd give her what she wanted – no, needed.

Finally, he says, "Take me to your mistress, then."

He lets her lead the way, and does not close the door behind him. The tickling of the clock follows him through the woods, all the way to the castle.

* * *

The edifice is dark and cold, just like he expected; the Count and his sons are asleep, and the woman takes him through the servants' quarters.

His eyes flicker up through the darkness of the corridor, behind the turn of the narrow stairs, and he can hear her. Amidst the faint sound of dozens of people inhaling and exhaling in deep sleep, through the heavy snores of the Count, past the ancient stone walls, he can hear her heart.

He can hear it weakening, the sweet rot of her slow and inevitable death filling the entire castle as he makes his way up the stairs to her chambers. Her heartbeat is there, fainter and fainter as the seconds drag on.

_Tick, tock_.

The maid gives an audible sigh. "Here," she whispers when they finally reach the second floor. As silently as she can, she pushes open a set of heavy wooden doors and they step into golden light.

The sound of heartbeat is everywhere, all around him, and he lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when he sees her.

"My dear little girl," he murmurs, knowing that to anyone listening it would sound caring. Affectionate, even. The world really is stupid.

She is impossibly thin. That is the first thing he notices, as soon as he's close enough to inspect her; the deep hollows of her pale cheeks, the sharp angle at which her cheekbones protrude, the jut of her small chin, the blue veins running across her skeletal wrists. His eyes roam over this small bundle of bones and skin, and his gaze stops at the hollow of her throat.

"Madeline?" she chokes out, her eyes still shut. Her voice is nothing but a mere rasp, and his lips curl in something akin to disgust; he detests weakness. "Madeline, who is this?"

The maid looks about to cry, all her previous strength gone. It all is so utterly pathetic to watch. Just like a scene straight out of a little girl's fairytale story – the dying princess and her grieving servant.

"He's here to make you better, dove," the woman says, her smile wobbly. "He'll cure you."

The girl looks up at him; her eyes are green, shining with fever like emeralds in the golden candlelight, trusting and fragile (and he wants to claw them out of that white face, because they make her look even weaker now that she's opened them). Her lower lip trembles, and she swallows.

"Are you a physician, sir?"

He steps forward and reaches the bed in a long stride. Behind him, the maid makes a small noise of protest. "Of some sort," he says, and without turning around, "Leave us."

"No-" the girl dares to protest in her rasp of a voice. She tries to sit up on the pillows, but her body is too weak even for that. "Madeline, no, don't leave me-"

"We had an agreement," he says sharply, and the maid takes a sharp intake of breath. "Honor it, or she will die."

He can hear her shake her head, furiously. "You can't-"

"I can rip her throat out in less than a second, my darling Madeline," he says lightly, conversationally. "If you do not leave."

"I-" She pauses, and he imagines she must be blinking back tears. "Very well, then."

And then they are alone.

The girl shrinks away from him, her shaky hands pulling the covers almost up to her chin. He sits down lightly on the bed, right next to her, and he notices, once again, the overwhelming scent of her death. He inhales the odor of her thinning blood, her dying flesh, her waning breath. He tastes her death, he can feel it inside him as if it were his own.

After what feels like hours, she speaks. "Have you come here to kill me?" she asks. "I have heard the servants whispering behind their hands when they think I'm not listening. They say I would be better off dead. So are you going to do it?"

He tilts his head to the side, arching an eyebrow questioningly. "That depends, my dear. Do you want to die?"

She blinks her pale green eyes. "No," she breathes, "I want to live. I want to... to marry, perhaps. To have a family of my own, some day. And _do_ something, perhaps help other people... I want to grow old. I-" her voice breaks. "I do not want to die."

She isn't lying. He himself can't remember ever wanting anything except blood, and flesh, and death. He does not remember ever being truly contented, being anything but hungry. He reaches forward, wraps a strand of soft dark hair around his finger.

"I cannot give you any of that," he whispers, his hand close to her sweaty face.

"Then why are you here?"

He gives her a crooked smile. "Because your darling maid came to me." He leans closer, his lips ghosting over her forehead – he wants to imprint himself on the dying girl. "I cannot give you a husband, or a household, or sons, or the chance to do something for yourself. I cannot give you any of that."

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, but does not flinch away from his almost-touch. "What _can_ you give me, then?"

His hand cups her cheek and he tilts her head backwards, his eyes now boring into hers. "I can give you life, Teresa Lisbon. I can give you power and blood and glory. I can give you an eternity of youth and beauty – I can give you time itself. I can give you this second, this minute, this hour, this day and all the days to come, until you are as old as I am. If you wished it. The question is, do you wish it, Teresa?"

Her eyes widen as his words slowly dawn on her, but she doesn't shiver when his finger caresses her skin. "What's your name?"

He considers it for a moment, his hand never leaving the side of her face. "Back where I came from, people call me Red John," he says.

Her next breath comes sharp and fast, and he is mildly surprised when she curls her small hands into the collar of his heavy leather coat. "Cure me, then" she whispers. "Fix me, if you can."

He smiles, and lets his lips brush over hers.

The next morning, the Count's young daughter sits up and pushes the bloodied covers aside. There's a smile on her face, and color in her eyes.

**II.**

His life is a whirlwind of years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

The clock never lets him forget; _tick tock, tick tock_. He opens his eyes to the complete darkness around him, dried blood around his lips, on his chin and his fingers. He has not the slightest idea what day it is, and he does not wish to find out, either.

He has begun to fade of late, and it worries him. There are patches in his vast memory that he simply cannot recall; entire years that go missing, decades even, and he's scared because he's never been one to forget the fall of kingdoms and empires, the ashes and the rust after the collapse-

Oh, he is old. Ancient. He knows this much.

He remembers a bronze axe with a wooden handle; a woman's rippling laugh; the sound of music and the sight of dancing men and women; a thousand ships set sail at a single girl's whim; the taste of overripe fruit and watered wine; waiting outside an ancient city's walls, his blood singing in his veins for more blood, someone else's blood.

He remembers all the falls. But for the life of him, he cannot remember any rise.

Suddenly, without any real will to, he remembers the girl with the emerald eyes and the call of her thinning blood. The weakening sound of her heartbeat. The tempting blue vein at her pale throat.

He remembers her death, beautiful and glorious and covered in crimson.

So he sits in his darkness, and does what he's been doing for decades – for centuries. He waits.

Because he knows.

* * *

It's autumn when she finds him again, in a small German village near a grand stone castle much like her own had once been. The leaves are red, painting a pretty picture. The forests surrounding his temporary humble house are aflame with the false warmth of the color of blood.

She comes inside in a dark hood, wearing a heavy woolen dress and a golden pendant he's sure she hadn't been wearing the night he turned her.

"You're here," is the first thing she says when she sees him, sitting in the darkness – listening to the clock's rhythmical humming. _Tick, tock_. "I'd hoped you'd be here, everyone I asked told me you'd be here-"

He fixes her with a cold glare, and she stills, looking at him with uncertainty written all over her pale face.

"Well, I _am_ here," he says eventually, only when she looks as though she's about to crumble under the pressure of the overwhelming silence. "And so are you. What I do not understand is why."

"I-"

"I gave you life, Teresa, out of a momentary and idiotic whim. You were foolish to seek me out again." He doesn't mean these words, at least not whole-heartedly. There is a part of him that's glad she's back, because he's almost forgotten how it is to be in the presence of someone who does not look up at him with reverence and adoration.

"I left Madeline, and my family," she says, shaking her head. "They all think I'm dead. And... I suppose I am. Dead. Aren't I?"

In a flash he is in front of her, his hands gripping her shoulders, his face only a few inches away from her own. She stinks of human sweat, of tears and heartbreak, of lost hope and a thick, grieving, _mortal_ heart.

"You've turned someone," he murmurs. It isn't a question, he can smell the man all over her. She reeks of him, of his desperation and his tears and his betrayal.

She holds his gaze, sparkling green eyes meeting his own dark ones. "Yes, I did," she whispers, almost inaudibly. "I turned him because I loved him. Because I thought... I thought I could make him happy again. That we could spend eternity together, if only he could learn how to live again – I thought I could teach him. But-"

She has no time to scream; he has her by the throat against the nearest wall before she knows what's happening, and she's struggling to keep her eyes open.

"You stink of weakness," he hisses, his fingers pressing so hard he can see her visibly struggle for air, before she remembers she doesn't truly need it. "I choose my creations carefully, Teresa. I detest degenerate blood, human frailty, and you are full of it, of all those _lesser_ things."

She squirms in his hold, her nails scratching the hand that holds her against the cold wall. She chokes out a sound, half animal, barely understandable.

But he hears it, and he understands it.

He lets her go so abruptly that she falls in a graceless heap to the ground, her own hand clutching her delicate reddened throat.

"What did you say?" he asks, anger simmering beneath the misleading calmness of his voice.

She lifts her eyes to his once again. "_You're_ weak," she rasps, nails digging into the wooden floor beneath her.

He grabs her by the hair, blank ink swallowing the pallor of his skin; he pulls her head back, exposing the long curve of her throat. "_What did you say_?" he hisses, abandoning all pretense of tranquility.

"I said _you're_ weak!" she shrieks, her voice harsh and guttural, her nails dragging down his arm. "_I_ am _not_ weak. All my life I've been told that – poor little Teresa, sick little thing, won't make it past sixteen." She coughs a little, but her grip on his arm does not falter – neither does his on her hair. "You think I'm weak for turning him, but I did it out of love. I was in _love_! But you don't know that, because you've never had that! You've never had anything, and who's weaker? _Who's weaker_?" She laughs, her eyes blazing; almost crazed. "I'm not the one hiding from the world! I'm not the one preying on stupid peasant girls for dinner! I'm not the one wiping out families because a better man finally spoke the truth about me!"

For a moment, he sees red. His fingers tremble around the strands of her hair; then he lunges at her throat.

* * *

He's sitting on the bed next to her, watching her intently in silence, when she wakes.

Her throat is raw and covered in drying blood, remnants of his teeth in her neck, tearing through veins and arteries. He watches with fascination as it begins to slowly knit back together, and her eyes flutter open.

She looks around, takes in her surroundings, eyes narrowed before her gaze falls on him. Immediately, she tenses.

"Get away from me," she growls, making her tone as threatening as she can.

He gives a small chuckle, devoid of any humor. "Come now, love," he says, still unmoving. "This isn't a fitting look for you."

She shakes her head, looking at him with so much hate it almost throws him for a moment. Almost. "Why don't you just kill me?" she asks. "I have no more reason to live, and isn't this why you saved me in the first place?" She closes her eyes, gives a small sigh. "Here. Do it."

He feels a flare of irritation in his chest, but he forces it down. _Weak_. Instead, he gestures from behind him a girl, no older than seventeen, with matted blond hair and a vacant expression. A young chambermaid from the castle who surely won't be missed. "Stop this nonsense, and drink," he says. "_Feed_. You need it."

She stares at him, dumbfounded. "No."

"You said to me earlier that you are not weak," he says quietly. "You told me once, years ago, that you wished to live. Has that changed now?"

She does not speak.

"Only the weak die," he whispers, moving closer. "Only the weak cease to exist, cease to _want_. And you seem so certain that you are not weak. Well, you shouldn't be. I have no sympathy for weakness."

She keeps staring at him, still like a statue. "Why are you doing this?" she murmurs. "Why did you do all this to me?"

He knows she isn't talking about the unfortunate chambermaid he has no doubt she will drain in a short while. She isn't even talking about the way he attacked her earlier, the meal of her blood he allowed himself. She is talking about that first time he pressed his lips to hers, and then to her drying throat; about that first time he killed her.

He decides to tell her the truth. "What prompted me to save you was your maid's bravery. That admirable, utterly stupid love the poor woman had for you." He reaches out to touch her face, but changes his mind and lets his hand drop back to his side. "And I'm saving you now, because I admire your own strength."

She stares without really seeing at the ceiling. Her cheeks are wet, her neck still marred and covered in blood. "And what if I refuse your attempts to _save_ me?"

He shrugs, a leather clad shoulder rising and falling elegantly. "Then I will kill you," he replies easily. He means it; what he doesn't mean is the words he tells her next, but he knows it's the only way she'll listen. The only way she'll comply. And oh, he does know how to be convincing. "I will torture you, the way no man should ever be tortured – and I know the pretty images are already flashing in your mind, love. I will make you scream and make you weep until you regret your decision with every fiber of your being." He pauses, taking in her sickened expression. Well, it's not like he hasn't done any of these things before. "And then I could lay your mangled corpse at your brothers' door, and tell them of what you'd become, of what I was forced to do to rid the village of its demon, until they look down on your dead body with disgust. And then I'll kill them too."

After the longest time, she sits up. Her eyes are cold as ice; dead. She doesn't spare him a second glance as she gets out of bed, and bites into the girl's throat.

He sits back and watches her gulp down the sweet-smelling blood, watches the beautiful movement of her elegant throat (still raw and bloodied, but healing). He lets out a small sound of satisfaction, something that could pass even for the tiniest of moans.

After a while she lets the corpse fall gracelessly to the ground, her eyes closing in something between ecstasy and disgust. He stands, slowly clapping, an comes to stand beside her, a hand sneaking its way around her thin waist.

"Good," he tells her, and she doesn't open her eyes when caresses her glistening cheek with his thumb. "Beautiful."

He wipes the blood from her chin, then from her lips.

"You did not mean any of those things you told me," she says coolly, still refusing to open her eyes.

He laughs, low and soft. "What makes you say that? I meant every word."

**III.**

He takes her to Venice.

(_"I don't like it here," she had whispered when their small ship entered the Grand Canal. "I don't like it at all."_

_He had clenched his teeth, and his arm had tightened around her waist. "Quiet," he'd whispered, a harsh threat not meant for the ears of others._

_She had looked up at him, those beautiful emerald eyes large and furious. "You said you were going to be a gentleman, remember? Patrick would have never shushed me so; he always let me speak. He used to love to hear me speak."_

"_Patrick _left_ you," he'd hissed. "Patrick ran after the ghost of his wife and ignored everything that you did for him. Or had you forgotten that, too?"_

_She had bitten her lip, and said no more_.)

He introduces her to the nobles of the city; sometimes as his wife, sometimes as his sister, sometimes as his lover. Teresa, for all her rectitude and naïve airs, knows how to wield smiles and kill with her perfect dimples.

They are at a ball at the palace when he realizes he's grown weary of this child's play.

Tonight she is a courtesan from Milan, a girl famed for her rare beauty and her knowledge of the customs of the faraway lands, for her witty jokes and her recitations of Ovid. He is a nobleman from France, and his dark eyes are sharp and always on his radiant companion.

He sips his wine slowly, half-wishing it was blood, leaning gracefully against the grand fireplace as he watches her with mild interest. She is resplendent tonight; he has made sure of it. The finest gold cloth, the finest emeralds to match her gorgeous eyes. One of the noblemen dared to come up to him and remark that one does not keep a songbird if it does not compliment its cage.

He wonders, fighting the sudden, inexplicable urge to smile, what would Teresa say if she heard the man speak those words.

From across the room, he watches as she throws her head back and laughs, that long white throat once again exposed, and he remembers, unbidden, that same frail skin breaking beneath his teeth; like poetry, like music. True art. He can hear her blood humming over the laughter and the chatters, and for a moment, the world stops. For a moment, her death is all around him again, its scent and taste overpowering him; he wonders, not for the first time, how it would feel if he took that lovely white neck and his hands and _twisted_.

The clock is humming in his pocket. _Tick, tock. Tick, tock_.

Before he can blink he is by her side, staring the other men in the eyes. They all take an instinctive step back, before they force themselves to try and reciprocate the look he's giving them.

"Leave," he says, firmly.

He is dangerously close to her, her back brushing against his chest now, and every muscle in his body aches as he watches the men leave, shaking their heads and muttering to each other.

"What are you doing?" she asks coldly, and he smiles into the dark ink of her hair, because he's taught her how to be cold. It's beautiful. "Have you finally gone _completely_ mad?"

"Watch how you speak," he breathes against her ear, but she does not shiver. Not anymore.

Before she can protest, they are leaving; he sweeps her down the corridors made of gold and marble, out to their narrow gondola.

She merely rolls her eyes and does not speak to him for the rest of the night.

* * *

He fucks her against the wall in their palazzo.

This time she doesn't make a sound, sinking her teeth into her lower lip, her fingers fisted in his hair.

He claws his own fingers into her flesh until she cries out, not only in pain, and leaves black and blue marks all over her lovely white skin. Her nails leave long red stripes down his back, and sometimes he feels the tissue beneath her harsh and unforgiving hands.

She struggles to remain silent, but in the end she cries out. She always does, and he can't help but do the same.

(_"A brute," her maidservants whisper behind their hands when they think he isn't listening. "She couples with the devil himself."_)

They sleep, more often than not, in the same bed.

Brocade and a coffered ceiling on the four poster, the finest silk sheets and covers; he pays for the best. She always sleeps on her side, her back to him, curled into herself. On quiet nights he watches her, watches this beautiful precious doll he can never put back together quite right, and wonders. He thinks.

He thinks about her death, about the clock that's always ticking (_Tick, Tock_), about her milky skin and her emerald eyes, about her blood when it trickles down her neck every time he drinks from her. Under the cover of the stars, night is the only time he allows himself to be afraid.

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock_.

The clock hums.

He watches her. He sits up and brushes a strand of dark hair away from her face, his hand coming to rest on her fragile throat. She does not stir, and he wonders what she might be dreaming about.

_I could kill you so, _so_ easily_, he thinks. The image of her blood staining his silk sheets is the only thing on his mind; the image of a red gaping smile against that swan-like neck. _If I kill you, how will I remain awake? If I kill you, will I fall?_

He has seen the rise of empires and their fall, he has seen the crowning of kings and their death, he has seen people worship animal-headed gods before deciding to serve just one merciful lord.

His fingers close around her wrist, hard enough to break, and still she does not wake. His own perfect, broken goddess. He closes his eyes, in his own form of prayer.

* * *

He takes her to all the great cities of Europe and Asia; to all the great ruins of ancients.

In fallen cities, in desolate tombs, in lonely desert roads he tells her stories; of armies, of swords and axes, of men who marched for months with sand in their eyes, in the hopes of speaking to God; he tells her of hanging Babylon, of Ur, of Solomon the Great, of temptresses and wicked women in high towers and colorful veils.

"But have they no names?" she asks him one night. They're alone, in the ruins of a city swallowed by sand and time – by earth itself. It's almost midnight, starlight illuminating their pale skin. "The wicked women, have they no names?"

He laughs, low and soft. "How would you have called them, love?"

She shrugs, nonchalantly. "Jezebel, Madeline used to say, Jezebel and Salome and the Queen of Sheba. She said that they all went to hell." She turns to face him, her green eyes appearing almost black in the dark of the night. "Have you met any of them?"

"I'm not that old," he says, but perhaps he is after all. The truth is, he does not quite remember. After so many years, it's a chore simply to _recall_. "But even if I was, would it even matter?"

She sighs, looking up at the sky. "I suppose. I would love to meet someone who will be famous – or infamous, I don't know. I would like to find a book one day, with a familiar name, and be able to say 'once, I knew her'." She gives him a sideways look. "Or 'him'."

"Once," he whispers, running a hand down the side of her throat, "there was a tree once, here. The largest oak within a hundred miles. It stood tall and immovable, right in this very courtyard, in the center of this palace. And oh, it was a palace, love – gold and lavish with marble and jewels on the walls. The carvings on the ceilings took dozens of craftsmen dozens of years to finish. The King's daughter used to visit this oak tree every day, used to sing to the roots to make the grow faster and longer, used to sing to the leaves to keep them strong and green all year round."

She is quiet, eyes still turned skywards.

"It was said that the Princess's songs kept the tree immortal," he continues. "People said that the tree would never cease, even if the kingdom fell around it."

He smiles at her, and it's a mere twist of the lips; he's forgotten how to smile truly.

He twists a strand of dark hair around a pale finger, watches it spring into a perfect curl. "And the kingdom fell," he tells her, his voice sibilant and low. "The gates were ruined, the men were slain, the women raped and the palace looted. And I-" he brushes his thumb over her cheek, and now she's looking at him, straight into his eyes, "-I killed the Princess, right at the base of her oak tree. I drained her and left her body there, between the roots. And look now, my love."

He sweeps a hand over the vast, bleak landscape. "Now the palace is gone, only ruins left in its place. The King's name forgotten, the Princess's too. The kingdom itself erased from the maps. No one will recall its name, no one will care. The tree is gone." He pauses for a moment. "And I am still here."

All the epics and the poetry did not save a city from its fall. For all its pretensions to immortality, death came and fed, and now it is no more.

"I am too," she whispers after a while, emerald eyes sparkling in the dark. "I'm here too. And I will not die again."

It is moments like this when he remembers why he did not kill her that night, all those years ago. He pulls her face to his and kisses her.

* * *

One night, she says, "I want to go back. I want to go back to Britain."

He stills, but does not set down the book he's holding.

She steps closer, she's always been brave. Foolishly so. "I want to go back. I want to see Patrick again."

He does set the book down after all, folds a hand over another, and glares at her. "Do you now?"

She takes a deep breath. "I have grown tired of you killing. I have grown tired of death. I have grown tired of traveling and senseless fucking. I want to go back to Britain."

_Tick, tock_, the clock hums in his pocket. "And what exactly has sparked this newfound desire, love?" he asks, conversationally.

She shrugs, as if she can convince him she's impassive. "I have had news. He's returned to Britain. It's been more than a century, and I want to see him again."

"Is that so?" He smiles wryly. "And how do you think _he_ will receive news of _you_? How will he receive _you_? Do you think he will welcome the woman who turned him and then ran back to the man who slaughtered his family with open arms? Do you think he will take you in his arms and kiss you and make love to you?"

She does not reply.

He stands, and she lifts her chin to meet his eyes. Emerald. It's the only thing he dreams about lately. "No," he says icily. "He will not."

"I don't care what you say," she says quietly, her voice unwavering. "I've lived with you – no, I've been _caged_ with you for too long, I've killed, and I've watched you kill and slaughter, and I've dirtied myself for far too long, God will look down on me and judge me for what I am, what you've _made_ me-"

In a flash he has her by the throat, his lips against her ear. "I've elevated you," he hisses. "I've made you a goddess, a queen among women. I have given you immortality, and this _boy_ has taken your gift and spat in your face."

"You gave me nothing," she snaps, looking him straight in the eye. "You gave me to yourself, as a gift, you pathetic-"

He hits her so hard she falls to the ground and does not move for a moment, before she chokes out an ugly, strained laugh.

He leaves her there, her laughter following him with each step he takes.

The clock in his pocket whispers. _Tick, tock, tick tock_, and she's still laughing.

**IV.**

_(She decides to kill him._

_She changes her mind, every now and then, when he smiles with something more than cruelty and malice, when he kisses her without teeth and caresses her without nails, when he takes her to theaters and restaurants instead of slaughterings and executions. She changes her mind occasionally – but he always gives her a reason to change it back._

_She finds a small stake, and hides it in her long sleeve. And now her smile has edges; it has its own corners.)_

* * *

"Do you love me," she asks him, quite seriously, one night. He is lighting a candle, and his hand stills.

He does not turn around, he merely sets the match down. She smells of her personalized scent from the perfumery on the Seine, of rouge, of powder, and cinnamon; beneath it she smells of blood. "That depends," he says slowly. "I have no desire to write you sonnets if that is what you mean, my dear."

"But do you _love_ me?" she asks again, her voice tight. His lips curve; she asks for love the way the evil queen might ask for Snow White's heart. _How lucky for Patrick_, he thinks. _He was not meant to be the huntsman_. "Would you come for me when I need you?" she continues. "Would you save me? Would you avenge my death, were I to die? Would you die for me?"

"I would not die for anything or anyone," he replies coolly. "Not even myself. I am immortal, and I aim to keep it that way."

She nods her head. "So no then," she says quietly. He tenses, expecting her to throw a tantrum, to yell at him and curse. Like a child, and he grits his teeth – he did not raise a child.

Instead, she settles back into her chair, to read her book. Her pulse is steady, he can hear it, and he swallows. She speaks no more, as if it were just a simple matter of what bread to direct her maids to buy tomorrow, as if she had not been waiting for these words.

When she looks up, not even a second later, he has both hands on the arms of her chair and their faces are level. She sets down her book, and meets his gaze calmly, almost dispassionately.

"You are mine," he all but growls. "I made you. I killed you and brought you into this world to live again. That is the truth, and the end of it. Do not speak to me of love, we are not children."

She nods again, and he can almost hear her – _Patrick would have said the words. Patrick would have said he loves me. Patrick would have gotten on his knees._

Patrick, Patrick, _Patrick_.

She will always be second to a dead woman, and he will always be second to a forlorn man.

* * *

His lips twitch when he feels the tip of her feeble stake against his chest.

_A fine game indeed_, he thinks. _We are immortals playing with death_.

Her hair, long and dark, fall like a veil around his face, scented and soft. When the kiss of the stake comes nearer, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop the laughter.

"Hush," she whispers to him, presses her small hand against his throat. She leans forward, and their lips are almost touching.

"So what are you going to do now, my love?" he asks, knowing she will pull away with a laugh and resume her daily routine, any moment now.

She chuckles.

"Do you know you talk in your sleep?" she murmurs, and he stills beneath her. Her lips curve into a wicked smile – a beautiful, _beautiful_ smile. Oh, she's learned that smile from him. "_Tick, tock_," she whispers. "_Tick, tock, tick, tock_."

The stake that feels like a knife slams home, and he doesn't have the strength to cry out.

"Tick tock, tick tock, _you are a clock_," she laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

Her emerald eyes are sparkling in the darkness.

* * *

The next day the peasants storm the Bastille and she dances in the streets, her feet bare and bloodied and cut by stones and glass.

She spins and laughs at the blood red sky, wondering if Patrick can hear her.


	2. Teresa

**Notes: **In the end I couldn't resist, I just had to write some vampire PatrickxTeresa as well. This chapter is basically chapter one from Teresa's point of view - which means that, at the end, we're left with the same ending (only with a few more scenes added). It includes how Teresa turned Patrick, their travels together, their parting and her reunion with Red John, and finally her reunion with Patrick.**  
**

A big thank you to clairebare, for reading, consulting and encouraging me to post this!

* * *

"Heaven queen, carry me away from all pain  
All the same take me away, we're dead to the world  
Dead, silent, constant, yet always changing  
- My favorite view of this world " - Nightwish

* * *

**I.**

(_In the blue dark of dusk, a man sits alone in a small, decrepit room; waiting._

_The single candle was snuffed out long ago, but he can still see the bloodstains on the wooden floorboards, now dried and brown beneath the thick layer of dust. The small, enclosed space reeks of stale blood; it's no surprise. Weeks have passed since the man the locals call the Devil was last seen in the village, and he can see now that the man has left nothing but ashes and rust in his wake._

_He wonders briefly if he might find decomposing bodies and skeletons hidden in the humble hut. That would be fitting._

"_You are a fool to go in there," a passing woman had cried out, the moment she'd spotted him pushing open the creaking door. Her pale eyes had been wide with terror and disbelief, and he'd simply ignored her. "A thousand curses will fall upon you if you enter this house!"_

_Now, as he sits back in the uncomfortable chair, hidden by the shadows, he can't help but chuckle – a chocked, bitter sound that cuts through the silence like a knife. A thousand curses have already fallen upon me, he wants to say, but no one will hear. No one will care. And he prefers it that way._

_His eyes search the dark room, slow and methodical. All he sees is dust – on the floors, on the walls, on the windowsill. No one has dared set foot in this place since its occupant's departure, this much is clear. He supposes he cannot blame them._

_He spots a small wooden device, on the windowsill – a clock that ticks away the seconds rhythmically, as if counting down the seconds he himself has left in this life._

_He's come here looking for something, anything, but the demon of the village has left nothing for him to find. He should have known._

_Far away, across the forest, beyond the golden farmlands, high above in an imposing castle on the hill, a woman and three young men are crying. He knows, because that's all every single villager will talk about. He knows, because the bells of the tower are pealing so mournfully one would think the King himself has passed away._

_It's fitting._

_His vision is blurry with tears he struggles not to shed. His gaze falls on the gold wedding band around his finger, and for a moment he sees red. Crimson staining the glimmering surface, taunting him, laughing at him._

_He has to shake his head like a madman to snap back into focus._

_He folds his hands together and waits; for what, he doesn't know. Nothing matters anymore, and he has nothing else to do._

_He waits, and he listens as the sound of the bells gets louder and louder._

_The Count's daughter has died_.)

* * *

She's running; moonlight trickling through the dark leaves, showing her the way. Heart banging against her ribs (she can hear it, once again healthy and _dead_), breaths coming short and sharp, pain lancing through her side, dried blood on her pale throat.

Madeline's wails resonate in the quiet of the forest, and the tears come unbidden, her vision blurring. She can hear her maid screaming, cursing the man who killed her and took her away, and herself for bringing him into their home.

She is consumed by guilt and grief and so much _hunger_, hunger for something, _anything_.

_No_, she thinks between gasping breaths, grass blades and thorns scratching her face, _no_. His face smiles down at her in every shadow, his dark eyes sparkling with something she doesn't want to make sense of, crimson rivulets running down his chin as he pulls away from her neck and everything goes dark-

She trips over a log and tumbles gracelessly to the ground, letting out a shriek as she falls face first to the mud. The smell of the earth fills her nostrils, and suddenly she can hear it; a single hare hopping carelessly about a few feet away. It does not see her, it does not care.

She pulls herself up with a whimper, wincing at the feeling of the torn skin of her palms slowly starting to knit back together after her fall. She shuts her eyes, and listens. An infirm farmer is furiously admonishing his stubborn ox that refuses to pull his wagon any longer. The young landlady of the bootblack living just outside the forest is shrieking and crying, begging him to let go of her._ (And _they _are all mourning; the woman is wailing and the men are struggling to stifle their own sobs. They're all asking God why he took their darling girl away from them.) _Under the great oak tree a few feet away, a hare is pausing, sniffing amidst the protruding roots_. _She blinks rapidly, whipping her head around and she sees the animal, its black eyes fixed intently on her.

Then her eyes fall on its pulsing jugular veins and she is able to _hear_ its meaty, mortal heart pumping delicious blood to the tips of its legs. Suddenly, the world is divided into two categories. Things that _are_ blood and things that _are not_ blood.

She forces the flicker of guilt and shame away when she bites hard into the animal's small throat, but it comes rushing back once it's stopped squirming in her grasp.

* * *

"You'll find him in there, alright."

She pulls the hood of her stolen cloak lower down, to cover her face, and makes sure no hair slips out as she nods and thanks the passing villager who looks at her like there's more he wants to say but cannot bring himself to.

"Just be careful, girl," is all he manages in a rasp of a voice, before digging his heels into his burro's sides and riding away in the night.

She hoped that by covering her ears with the heavy wool she'd block the sounds away, but Madeline's cries still echo all around her. She panics when she wonders why no one else seems able to hear them, but then she remembers – the teeth, the blood-drenched sheets, the open window, the woods, the hare squealing in her hands. The village, and its dwellers narrowing their eyes and scurrying away from her once she asked them the question.

"_Where can I find him_?"

She can hear her maid's wails, and it takes every last ounce of her willpower not to collapse in a heap of guilt and regret. She can hear her brothers' curses, and she fears for what they might try and do. She can hear the healthy, meaty hearts beating like the drums of war all around her (_but no one else can_).

She draws a deep, shuddering breath, forgetting that _he_ didn't have to breathe which most likely means she doesn't either. Wrapping her arms around her frail form, she makes her way to the hut, leaves and pebbles crunching under her feet no matter how much she tries to keep quiet.

It rained in the morning, and the hem of her dress is covered with black mud, reminding her of the once liquid rubies still adorning the lines of her neck.

She doesn't know what she expects to find when she pushes open the door, timid and hesitant, feeling the rough wood giving way under her palm pressing against it. She enters, and it is then that she can taste it in the air.

Sweet and metallic and horrible, inviting. Mixed with the sounds of a broken man's heart and the rhythmic ticking of a clock – she only realizes she's been running her tongue along her teeth when she feels a sharp sting and blood fills her mouth.

She gulps it down and steps fully inside, closing the door behind her without sparing it another glance.

He is crying. That is the first thing she notices once she is close enough to inspect him. He is crying, and he is another man, one she has never met before in her life. Not that she has met many men besides her father and brothers.

(She hears them again, crying and shouting. Denying, and finally accepting what they think is the truth.)

The sound of his heartbeat is everywhere, all around her, and she lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding when he emerges from the shadows.

"Who are you?" she asks and jumps a little at the sound of her own voice, soft but clear. The last time she remembers speaking it had been no more than a choked sound, a dying rasp, the voice of a girl surrendering herself to weakness.

His eyes are surprised, questioning, fearful, mistrustful.

And blue.

In an instant all emotion is gone, and there's only emptiness left inside them.

"Who are _you_?" he counters, his voice demanding but she can hear it crack with pain and grief despite the newfound intensity of his stare.

She thinks of her father then, without knowing why.

"I-"

Words fail her, and she makes a move to remove her hood, but remembers the blood smeared across her throat and the golden pendant hanging above her chest, something no common girl would ever wear. She remembers her dark tresses and her pale skin, and how every single person in the village knows of the Count's young daughter and her delicate appearance.

_The Count's daughter is dead_, she tells herself, and tries very hard to believe it.

"What have you come here for?"

She takes some time to observe him, despite the tension engulfing them both, the questions hanging from the tips of their tongues. _Dirty gold_ is what she thinks as her eyes roam over his form, _rusty jewels and a faded light_.

He's beautiful, and he hurts.

And she's famished.

"Tell me your name," she breathes, watching mesmerized as his eyes shine azure in the moonlight seeping through the open window, listening to the ticking of the clock.

He considers her for a moment, his stance untroubled but his eyes a mighty storm. She has to fight the urge to step forward and place a comforting hand on his shoulder; she cannot bear to know such a fractured soul.

"Patrick," he says after a while, his tone guarded, and he's decided she is no threat to him. She is overtaken by the sudden impulse to laugh – or weep. Both would be so very welcome, relieving. She nods instead, taking a step closer to him. He does not shy away. _Why would he? You're just a girl in a dirty cloak, and he's a grown man_.

(A girl in a dirty cloak and rubies still dripping from her neck and fingers. A girl that should have died, but didn't.)

"You're not from around here," she observes, taking in the fine garment of his tunic and the sun-kissed curls on top of his head. "You're from somewhere far away. What have you come here for?"

She knows what the people whisper about the man occupying this humble hut, and she cannot think of anyone but herself that would have dared to come here. She cannot understand why she's found a different man here, one looking as lost as she feels.

"I came here looking for someone," he explains, and then she knows.

"Me too." She takes another tentative step forward, her eyes searching his own but she can't find anything other than pain and a tall impenetrable wall behind those bright blue orbs. "But he's not here."

She wonders briefly if this man, Patrick, is a friend of Red John's. If he is, they can search for him together.

"Do you know where he might have gone?" Patrick asks, and she thinks she's caught a small flicker of hope in his voice. His heart picks up speed, flutters in his chest.

She shakes her head, trying to block out the sound, the taste of copper and death lingering all around them, the aching of her own gums and how dry her tongue suddenly feels.

"No," she chokes out. "I was hoping that you would."

"But do you know him?" Patrick insists, and there's more to his words now than simple hope – there's desperation, and something very close to madness. "Do you know who he is?"

He swallows, and she can't tear her gaze from the movement of his throat. Her hands tremble, her whole body aches (her mouth is so _dry_).

"I – I'm trying to find him too," she utters, feeling the hood sliding from around her face but suddenly failing to care. "We can – search for him together."

His eyes widen, light up, but she can only focus on them for so long before the curve of his throat demands her undivided attention once again.

Two days ago, for her monsters were still products of the imagination. Existing only in the fairytales Madeline used to read to her when she was a little girl. Tonight, she's one of them.

* * *

From what little she says to him he deduces she knows the man he's looking for, and decides to stick with her. At first, she tries to refuse, but he is haunted blue eyes and a big hopeful smile, and she's a little girl reading fairytales about knights in shining armors and Prince Charming all over again.

She only takes off her hood after she's bathed in the shallow river and her skin is clean again (she rubs and _scratches _until there's not a trace of red left on the pale white flesh, until her whole body is raw and aching), and is mildly surprised to find that her lush dark hair and green eyes seem to have no effect on him.

She remembers her father's friends and servants, young and old, looking at her with more than mere affection, before she fell ill, and it's a novelty to be healthy and pretty and regarded as nothing more than another commoner.

Then she sees the gold wedding band around his finger, and thinks no more of it.

"Where is your wife?" she asks him two days after they've left the hut, she wrapped in a thick brown cloak he stole for her from the neighboring house and he wearing a woolen tunic above his fine garments.

Fallen leaves are crunching beneath their feet as they walk side by side, only a few feet away from the village's narrow gate. They do not seem to attract the eyes of strangers – and why would they? They're nothing more than a man and a woman making their way through the village, they're just like everyone else.

_Only we're not. _I_ am not_.

He draws a sharp breath, and she immediately regrets asking.

"She's dead," Patrick says in a ghost of a voice, eyes staring blankly ahead.

She murmurs that she's sorry, and waits for him to continue.

"That's why I'm here. To find Red John."

She frowns, jumping a little to the side to avoid a cluster of children that almost runs her over as they chase a cat. "What does he have to do with it?"

He tells her his story, and she doesn't sleep that night.

Lying awake in a bed made of straw, her fingers trace the curve of her throat until they find the spot he had sunk his teeth into. The next morning, she decides to help this man who has nothing. She decides to show him that he can live again.

Just like she was taught.

* * *

She's kneeling down on the hardwood floor next to him, watching him intently in silence, as he wakes.

It's morning, and she's full.

His skin, still smudged with ugly crimson, has healed – much more quickly than her own had, or at least that's what she thinks. His eyes flutter open and she knows he must be overwhelmed by the sudden ability to see _everything_; the motes of dust sparkling in the sunlight, the smooth perfection of his own hands, an area on the stair banister where the varnish has been rubbed away from the passage of hands over decades.

He blinks rapidly, and groans; she can almost feel his ache and discomfort as if were her own. _It was, a few weeks ago_. Or is it months?

At first she hadn't known what she'd just done. She'd thought she had killed him. She had wept over his unmoving body, she had cried for the man she didn't know, for his blood pooling around them, for everything she'd left behind and could never get back. For her own death, and the screams of her family.

For the blood-drenched sheets she'd left behind for them to find.

She had cried until she had no more tears to shed and the sun had begun to rise, blue light seeping through the ever open window. And then she had seen it – the gruesome wound closing, the skin knitting back together like cloth. She could only sit back and watch with horror and awe.

He tries to sit up but winces, a gurgling sound escaping his lips as he collapses back onto the floor. She places a gentle hand on the side of his face, and forces herself to smile, all too aware of the tears still streaking her own cheeks.

"You're alright," she soothes, and he blinks his blue eyes, confused. "The pain will go away in a minute."

_And then the hunger will come and erase everything else_. She does not tell him that, because she had managed to control it, even though for a little while, and believes he can do the same. He looks strong.

"What-"

"Hush, you're alright," she repeats, her voice barely above a whisper, her vision blurry. She's made a mistake. A terrible mistake – she shouldn't have turned him. She shouldn't have done this. Her gaze falls on the crimson stains on the white fabric of his shirt, on the floorboards, on her own hands. "You're alright."

Maybe if she keeps saying, she'll believe it.

**II.**

They travel to Madrid.

(_"Goodbye, my darling," her grandmother, from her mother's side, says to her upon their departure. She was the only one to offer them a roof for their heads, the only one who would not spread the news that the Count's daughter is alive. Because Teresa explained (_lied_). "Goodbye, my sweet."_

_It is a cold morning. The mists cloy, thick and white and ice-cold around her skirts, and Teresa tries her best to smile. It is a pitiful thing. She pulls her hood over her hair, and this tries very hard not to cry._

"_I will miss you," her grandmother says, pulling her into a hug. She smells of bread and milk and a good-hearted woman but Teresa, for the moment, at least, smells of blood and another man's death. Perhaps that is why the neighbors all shy away from the soiled darling and the man she's brought with her, without even knowing why. They simply trust their instincts. "I love you. Remember that."_

_Later, her grandmother fades into the whites of the mists and Teresa presses her fingers, as lightly as she can, against the glass of the carriage's window, traces the shape of the hunched woman through the pale hush of her own breath. Silently, she says goodbye to her home. To her life._

_She pulls the curtains and slips her hand into Patrick's, who gives a gentle squeeze_.)

She tells Patrick that she's heard people whispering that the man they call Red John has been sighted there, and when they enter the city he can barely contain his hopeless determination. Her heart misses a beat and she wants to gather him in her arms and calm him down.

But she doesn't do that – she never does.

They introduce themselves as traveling siblings from the North. Patrick has enough money, and he can afford rich, flowing garments and a personal coach. They catch the eye of a wealthy merchant who offers to accommodate the brother and sister until they find a house of their own to settle down.

Patrick, for all his grief and apparent flightiness, knows how to wield smiles and talk his way to people's hearts.

There is a girl with them on the look for a temporary house, a girl named Rafaela with hair black like the sky at night and eyes like chocolate, a true Spanish beauty, orphaned for the last seven years by the war.

They chose her, because she knows.

"Señor," Rafaela says now, drawing out the word, so that her blood-red lips purse and curl at the same time, and Teresa tries again, her tongue feeling impossibly thick in her mouth for the song-like sound of this foreign language.

"Señor," Rafaela repeats, and leans forward. Beneath them, the coach rocks on uneven ground and outside the tall buildings shine with the golden light of sunset. "_Señor_, Teresa. You must say the word as you bow, as you curtsy. Lower your eyes, like this." Rafaela demonstrates, her thick lashes brushing lightly against the rise of her rose-colored cheeks. "You must say the word as you are born into it. Arch your voice." She casts a sideways glance to the man sitting next to her, her eyes sparkling. "Patrick has already mastered it."

"_Señorita_." Patrick bows his head, his golden curls falling in front of his eyes and he looks up at Rafaela with a grin.

Teresa has gotten used to this grin – but this doesn't mean it affects her any less than it initially did.

"Señor," Teresa tries again, doing her best to suppress the sudden pang of jealousy at the sight of the raven-haired girl pressing her thigh against Patrick's, slightly craning her neck so that the blue veins are seen more clearly beneath the taut skin. "Señor. Señor. _Señor_."

She gives an unladylike groan, her hands balling into fists, falling hard against her heavy skirts. "I can't get it right. And why we have to meet this Spanish lord and attend his ball is truly beyond me."

Rafaela smirks and shakes her head, ink black curls bouncing and brushing against Patrick's shoulder. "Patience, Teresa. No man likes a woman who answers back," she says, but it is clear from her smile that she inwardly laughs at the mere notion.

"I very much enjoy her retorts, though," Patrick says, his eyes now on Teresa, who starts fidgeting in her seat – and abruptly stops when she realizes what she's doing. "It would be a disaster if she did not speak her clever mind."

She forces herself to match his smirk, but her stomach is lurching. "You always find ways to provoke me, though," she says, and sees with the corner of her eye as Rafaela gives them both a slighted look when Patrick stands, as far as the narrow space allows him, and sits heavily down next to Teresa.

"Señor," Teresa says, closes her eyes, lets the word roll off her tongue like the wine her father used to allow her at the dinner table before her mother's passing. It is just as bitter and just as old.

Because now she's dead to the world, and she has to become someone new.

* * *

The gown hugs her body in all the right places, falls at all the right lengths.

She observes herself in the polished bronze looking glass – a thing that could feed the village near her father's castle for months. She makes a turn and her skirts swirl around her in waves of green before falling gently against her legs, and her lofty maid smiles with a quirk of her dark eyebrows.

"It's lovely," she says. _Far above the likes of you_, her curled lips hiss, silent.

Teresa brushes a hand across the neckline of the dress, her fingers coming to rest on the emerald pendant hanging low above her breasts. She curves her lips and tilts her head, and all she sees in the mirror is sin.

She remembers parading down the halls of her father's castle in thick, lush gowns, wrapped in white furs and wearing golden earrings. But she's never once felt like she does now – she parts her lips slightly and is almost surprised to see that her teeth are blunt and not smeared with crimson.

She hears the soft creaking of the door and sees Patrick enter her chambers through the looking glass, and she can hear Rafaela's heartbeat quickening, she can taste the girl's excitement in the air, and she has to curl her hand into firsts to prevent them from going up to cover her mouth.

Patrick gives a small bow, his blue eyes sparkling in the candlelight as he looks up at Rafaela.

"Señorita," he says, his voice a velvety whisper that makes the hair on both women's necks stand on edge.

All Teresa can hear is heartbeat, pounding with such intensity around her she almost loses it.

"Are you ready, my dear?" Patrick asks her, coming to stand beside her. Their gazes lock in the mirror, green meeting blue, and somewhere in the back she can see two dark brown eyes glaring like orbs of molten heat.

Despite herself, she smiles. "I am. I only hope the rain will stop – it would be a tragedy to ruin such a lovely dress."

He chuckles, places a soft hand on her shoulder – innocent, _friendly_, she tells herself as soon as her eyes fall on the gold ring around his finger. "You'd be beautiful, even covered with mud."

"Thank you, but I highly doubt it." She turns her head a little, looking up at him and wondering if it's her he's seeing or the ghost of his wife. "Shall we, then?"

He gives her one of his dazzling smiles, and behind them Rafaela purses her lips and folds her arms tightly about her chest. "We shall."

She winds her arm through his, and he inclines his head. "Teresa," he says, and she is startled by the way the name rolls off his tongue, like fine red wine, like a sigh, like so much unspoken secrets. This is a woman's name. Teresa is a girl with a woman's name, a name to be sung in verse, to be whispered by lovers in the dark, to be cried out in the throes of passion.

A word made entirely of caught breaths, and she swallows at the though of him perhaps saying at again like it ought to be uttered.

"We must be going now," Rafaela's sharp voice cuts through her guilty reverie, and Patrick's eyes are now on the girl. "The ball has already started," she says and whips around, the light catching the blood-red of her gown and the ink of her hair. Her hips sway as she leads the way, and Teresa promptly averts her eyes.

* * *

It's two hours past midnight, and Patrick is crying.

Teresa pulls him in her arms, her free hand going to his hair as she wipes the blood off his face, her fingers softly tracing the lines of his mouth.

"It is not our fault," she says, her own voice breaking, a mere rasp in the quiet of the night. "We could not help it."

She averts her eyes from the corpse at their feet, from the blood soaking the earth and the raven hair framing the girl's now pale face like a halo.

Patrick buries his face in her neck, his hands clutching her crumpled dress. She holds him tight, and feels her own eyes burn against the light breeze.

They only part at the first light of dawn.

* * *

When Patrick hunts for the monster who took life from his family only to give it to her, he's a thunderstorm. A creature of epics and verse, a man upon his very own tragic odyssey, about to brave winds and tempests and storms for revenge, an absolution he hints of in self-loathing smiles and words that do not pass his lips. He always holds his cards close to his chest, but Teresa knows gamblers when she sees them, because she's met many. He will bet everything and anything upon the slightest chance, if it meant he would get his nemesis' blood on his hands.

(_And Patrick, oh, Patrick is a man who desires only vengeance_.)

But when he's hunting her, he gives chase like man who does not want to catch his prey. He is not a lion, and he does not always play to win – but rather to prolong the moment.

He chases her through the woods and down the empty streets at midnight, with only the moonlight and the shining of her hair as his guide. Two flashes, one after another, running across the trawls and seaports, through the forests outside the noblemen's manors, along twirling dark rivers.

The first time he does it is because she asks him to.

"Is Petrarch truly so riveting?" he questions with a small smile playing on his lips when she is engrossed in a book in the Spanish merchant's vast library.

"I would not say so," she laughs, setting down the heavy volume. He nears her and without thought she straightens her back, as if to be better on guard. "The truth is, I am terribly bored."

"Is there anything I can do to remedy this?"

She considers his offer for a moment, careful to chose her next words. His smile is broad, inviting – warm. But, like always, it does not quite reach his eyes.

"Come outside," she says after a while, standing up and leading the way.

A few minutes later she's running like a doe in the gardens, her skirts torn and crumpled and covered in mud, but she does not have a care in the world. She's laughing, and always one step ahead of him; only because he lets her.

"You're supposed to catch me," she calls out behind her shoulder when she's finally reached the tree they have agreed he cannot near, for the game must always have rules. "What am I running for if you do not even try to catch me?"

He joins her laughter and gives chase again once she's left her sanctuary, and even though she wants to revel in the sound, she cannot help but hear his unspoken words in her head – _it is not you I want to catch_.

She halts and almost topples over when an unbidden voice inside her mind whispers, _all he wants with you is to use you to catch the one he truly wants_.

That same night she does not speak to him, but the next day they're chasing each other in the gardens again, and she allows herself to forget; to believe.

* * *

She takes him to a makeshift healer's camp near a small village, filled with the wounded and dying of what will later turn out to be an unnecessary battle. There are corpses piling outside the tent made of sail cloth, and a young girl with hollow cheeks and empty eyes tries to shoo the flies and crows that crowd them.

They make their way from one bed to another, she in nun's clothing and he clad as a wounded knight's retainer, both looking around intently, both searching. The air stinks of stale blood and illness, of death and desperation.

"There," she whispers into his ear, and they reach the bed farther from the tent's entrance with quick, purposeful steps. The young man is a bundle of bones and yellowing skin, his eyes staring without seeing, his forehead sleek with sweat.

Teresa takes his hand in hers, leans forward until her lips almost brush against his damp brown curls. "We are going to help you," she says, and the man blinks. Beside her, Patrick stiffens, but his face remains unreadable.

They carry the man through the woods until the camp is nothing more than an inconsequential dot in the horizon, and lay him down under a great cypress.

She does not stop holding Patrick's hand while they feed, and none of them speaks when the sun has finally set and they're back inside their coach, each one looking outside a different window.

* * *

When he cannot sleep and slips in her own chambers with a candle to light his way through the dark corridors of the manor, they sit on the four poster bed and talk about love.

"Love is a thing to be conquered," she says with conviction, "by steel and an iron will. It is a thing to be chased over wild seas and rocky mountains, a thing to keep close to your heart on winter nights so that it may keep you warm." Teresa cannot fathom anyone loving her the way she wants to be loved and not having fought for it first.

He smiles at her, and it's a torn, broken thing, drawn from his lips like an ugly grimace.

* * *

"We must leave this place," she tells him one night, when their landlord is on one of his usual trips into the country.

He is studying a book and making hasty notes on paper, and she stares at the ink stains on his fingers and the wooden surface of the desk. He sits so still he looks as though carved from stone.

When he looks up at her his eyes are blurry, unfocused – in a second they snap back into attention, and there's something inside them she cannot make sense of.

"Why should we do that?"

She gives a sigh, and sits down next to him, not without stealing a glance at the papers sprawled on the desk. She sees the word _red_ in almost every line, and quickly looks away.

"Our host," she says, her fingers fidgeting with the green ribbons of her dress. "I do not like him, and I do not trust him."

"Why is that?"

She shakes her head. "What does he want from me, Patrick?"

His lips quirk a little, and he sets down the quill. There is no light in his face, but his gaze is even. "He is enamored," he tells her. "He wants to feed you and clothe you, to court you and treasure you."

_He wants to beat me and cuff me. He wants to use me and then leave my soiled body for the crows, but he doesn't know – he has no _idea, she wants to say, but doesn't. "Do you truly believe that?"

"Of course," he says, voice soft and empty. "You are a beautiful woman, Teresa, every man would want that."

_Is another beautiful woman all I am to you, then_?

She stands, smiles, and the words she speaks next are meant to be nothing but a joke. But it comes out quiet, hesitant – and even to her own ears, hopeful. "Would you want that?"

His mouth opens and she tilts her head, watching him struggle for an answer, for the first time since they met.

"I would not dare," he says finally, and now he's smiling, so fetching and so void of all emotion. "Is our charming landlord not enough, Teresa?"

The same night he presses his lips to hers and kisses her hard, his hands wrapping around her shoulders so hard she fears she might break, and she lets him push her down on her own bed. She listens to his breath hitch next to her ear, and moans when his nails dig into her skin hard enough to draw blood – he's clutching her like a drowning man.

* * *

She's kneeling on the floor, watching the fire burn low in weak, halting gasps in the grate, still in her nightgown and with her hair disheveled.

_I'm sorry_, he had said, as if it changed anything. As if he meant it.

As if that would bring him back.

She hears the soft creaking of the door, but doesn't need to turn around to see who it is. The landlord makes his way to her, his footfalls soft and catlike on the plush carpet, and she's aware of the bareness of her shoulders and her exposed thighs where the flimsy garment has been torn from last night.

She closes her eyes, and lets the man's hand touch her shoulder, drag down her arm, snake around her waist. She lets him inhale the scent of her hair, the side of her face, her neck. Lets him pull her flush against his back, lets him whisper soft, sinuous words in her ear.

Then she kills him.

**III.**

She waits and listens, and eventually she finds out. If she could, she would laugh, because Patrick couldn't do in ten years what she was able do in a few months.

She dresses like a midwife and accompanies a family with two small babies boarding a coach from Madrid to a small village in Germany, and when she's there she tries very hard to let them go away unscathed.

The autumn leaves are painted red outside his house – it's a pretty, fitting picture.

* * *

"This is not a fitting look for you," he says, and she doesn't have to turn around to see that the corners of his lips are twisted in a smile devoid of all humor and amusement.

Sometimes she wonders if he only feels truly happy when he kills and tortures. All the other times, he looks simply empty – a vessel that keeps on living just because he's too proud to abandon immortality.

She gives a shrug, a bare shoulder rising and falling nonchalantly. She's sitting on the windowsill, forehead resting against the cool glass, and she's looking out into the moors, half-wishing she could run there and never return.

But she's not sure she really wants that anymore.

She hears him give a sigh, and in a flash he's beside her, towering above her like he so loves to do. "Stop sulking like a slighted child, Teresa. I thought you were more than that. That you _wanted_ to be more than that. Was I wrong?"

She shakes her head but doesn't look up, doesn't want to meet his eyes. "I did not want this," she tells him, her voice barely above a whisper.

"But you seemed to enjoy yourself last night," he says pointedly, resting a cool hand on her shoulder, and she half-expects to feel his nails digging into her skin. They don't.

A lone mockingbird flies right outside the window and her gaze follows it until it disappears behind a copse of trees.

"There are so many things I could show you," he's saying now, and she has to try not to block out his voice. "So many places I could take you, if you wished it. I'm offering you the world, and you act as though I'm taking it from you."

"But why would you do that?" she snaps, finally whipping her head around and leveling her gaze with his. "You said that you would kill me if I refused your saving, you say now that you want to show me the world – why? What is it that you want in exchange?"

He remains silent for a while, his dark eyes boring into hers, looking at her and straight through and she has to fight down a shudder.

"I've been alive for a very long time," he says finally, low and soft. "Believe it or not, I've become bored. You are... interesting, if only a little. The first interesting thing to happen to me in a long while."

She nods, slowly, as though she understands, pretends that his answer is explanatory enough. A few minutes later she politely excuses herself – she's still the Count's daughter, see – and locks herself in the small bedroom he's given her, lies down on the bed and weeps with her face buried in the pillows.

She knows he can hear her, can hear every little sound she makes, every tear trickling down her cheek and onto the hardwood floor, every sob and every shudder.

She waits for him to come upstairs and inside the bedroom, uninvited, to sit down on the bed next to her and either scold her for being so weak or take her in his arms, wipe away the tears with a gentle hand and pretend to care.

He does neither, and she doesn't even know why that makes her cry harder.

* * *

A week before they leave for Italy, he takes her to an execution.

"Open your eyes," he growls in her ear, low enough so that only she can hear it, his nails digging into her flesh through the fabric of her cloak and dress underneath. The air is damp and her hair is clinging to her forehead with moisture, hot and slick like blood. "I did not bring you here to act like a sniveling idiot."

Taking a deep breath she does as she's told, because there are too many people around and she doesn't want to draw attention to themselves.

She does not listen while the parson recites the convict's crimes, and prays for his soul to be shown mercy. Her eyes are glued to the executioner's axe glimmering in the sunlight trickling through the clouds, and she can almost feel her companion smile beside her.

"I used to do that, five hundred years ago," he whispers when blood is running down the elevated platform and onto the dirt beneath it, a grin in his voice. "Only for a short while that is."

In the end, he has to half-drag her away from the crowded square, and he shakes her to avert her gaze from the severed head lying in a pool of crimson.

"And you said you didn't want to go," he breathes into her ear on their way back to his house.

She doesn't reply; she merely closes her eyes again and lets him lead the way through the forest.

* * *

One of the windows in their palazzo is overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice, and she spends most of her days gazing at the gondolas and the people and the sun, but this time she does not wish she was out there.

She wishes he could leave her here in her gilded cage, away from the noblemen and the balls and the palace. But of course he doesn't.

"Are you supposed to be my savior, then?" she asks him one night, while she lays on the bed with his arms wrapped around her in a rare gesture of what she would have called affection if she didn't know him any better.

He lifts a strand of long dark hair, curls it around his finger. "Do not think, for a moment, that I am going to be for you what you tried to be for your precious boy," he says conversationally, as if talking about the weather.

_(I am doing you a kindness, he wants to say, his hands falling from her hips, and she turns around and looks at him like such a little girl still, those beautiful emerald eyes tired and uncomprehending._

_You should thank me, he thinks, pursing his lips a little to shatter her innocent heart some more, but he cannot quite smile – this final act of cruelty he cannot bring himself to perform, and he can't, for the life of him, understand why. _

I'm teaching you to survive, Teresa. You cannot afford to break now_._

_After everything, she looks at him like she's expecting things from him. _

_So foolish, and so beautifully innocent still._

"_I want to fix you, Teresa, and I will not fail like you did with him," he says, and makes the girl a woman.)_

She blinks once, twice. Waits for him to say something else. When he doesn't, she turns on her side and bites down on her lip so hard she draws blood. A few minutes later she's pinned on the mattress beneath him, head tilted back and neck exposed, and she does not have the strength to fight him.

* * *

She doesn't always know what to make of him.

Sometimes, life with him is a whirlwind of emotions and something close to adventure; she sees places and sets foot on lands she was never meant to know, never meant to touch, she learns things she never knew existed, she runs and hunts and it makes her feel alive. Sometimes, life with him is like dancing through thunderstorms, violent and passionate and fraught with tears and laughter, because sometimes he's a thunderstorm himself (so much like Patrick was, but so much different as well).

Holding his cards close to his chest but grinning with his teeth behind them, ready to bet everything and anything upon the slightest chance, if he desired it enough.

(_And sometimes Red John, oh, Red John is a man who desires the world_.)

But then there are the times when he is nothing like the wild tempest she knows him to be, but rather the eye of the storm. Calm and collected and with no insatiable hunger in his eyes, but rather an endless wait. A wait for something both far away and painfully close.

(_Some afternoons he chases her through the woods because she asks him to, but he never catches her, always letting her be one step ahead;_

_"You're supposed to catch me," she tells him when they've finally slowed down and she's sitting cross-legged on the damp grass, her skirts dirtied and torn. "What am I running for if you do not even try to catch me?"_

_He crouches down next to her, taking a lock of dark hair and twirling it between his fingers. "But if I catch you, the game will be over, and it's still too soon for that."_)

At odd times Teresa catches him watching her, when she is engrossed in a book or even an embroidery – he's insisted that she try to become a true lady for the eyes of the world, you see – and when this happens there is a prickling at the back of her neck, a shiver not always unpleasant, and when she looks up he will be across the room, bottom lip caught between his teeth, dark eyes watching her as if she is something altogether unreal, as if he's trying to make sense of her but can't.

"My darling, sweet girl," he murmurs against her skin one night, his hands finding their way under her skirts, and her eyes widen because he has never once called her that without mockery or malice in his voice.

He has never once laid her softly down on the bed, has never once removed her clothing with gentle hands, has never once lavished her with kisses and made love to her like a prince might do with his princess in a fairytale.

It has always been teeth and nails digging into her skin, blood running down her neck, hands pulling at her hair and shoving her roughly up against walls. It has always been strained choking sounds, growls and screams – never contented moans and soft sighs.

He rolls on his back, taking her with him, and at first she's too startled to move, to make the slightest sound. She stills, looking down at him with uncertain eyes, her hair falling around them like a curtain of dark silk as she lays her palms on his chest to steady herself.

Hands on her hips, he lifts himself up a little to capture her mouth with his, and urges her on with a small moan against her lips.

The next day she asks him about it when she takes his hand and climbs on their coach, and he simply shakes his head and does not say a word until they've reached the ball they are supposed to attend, where he only speaks about the lavish decorations and exquisite food.

After that she does not ask again, and learns soon enough that it is something that happens once in months, years – decades, even.

* * *

"Here, my darling girl," he says, and she hates it when he calls her that. They're in a desert she does not know the name of; it's been almost twenty years since they started traveling the East.

She wears her best smile and follows him inside the colorful tent, filled with the heavy scent of spice and incense, flowers and sweat. Tonight she is a slave trader's wife from Bulgaria to justify her pale skin and green eyes, but she's dressed in blood-red tulle and silk, a gold bracelet the shape of a snake around her upper arm.

His smile widens when one of the dancers approaches them, the small cloths she's wearing barely covering her olive skin and her wild black hair cascading down her back in slick waves. She moves her body to the rhythms of the slow, sensuous music, and despite herself Teresa cannot avert her eyes. Beside her, she can hear him chuckle, leaning back on the pillows and bringing his cup to his lips.

"Do you like her?" he breathes into her ear, his fingers brushing against her bare shoulder.

Before she knows what she's doing she nods, and he gives her a quick kiss on the neck before pulling away and grinning at the exotic beauty before them.

He leads both women in his own makeshift tent, and pulls Teresa against him for a bruising kiss. "She's yours," he whispers, and leaves.

The woman smiles, brazen and lascivious, moves to wrap her arms around Teresa's neck, tilts her head to the side and brushes her long hair away from her neck.

A few hours later he returns and finds Teresa sitting outside, cross-legged on the sand, staring up at the cloudless sky – counting stars, because sheep are too tempting, too innocent.

(Stars burn.)

"Where is she?" he asks her, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. She looks up at him, into his eyes that are now impossibly dark, takes in the crook of his grin, how disheveled his hair is, the open buttons of his shirt and the blood soaking the cream-colored fabric. "Were you so excited that you could not leave a little for me, then?"

She stands, levels her gaze with hers, sets her jaw; and slaps him hard across the face.

He blinks his brown eyes, dazed.

"I hate you," she whispers, barely audible in the quiet of the night, but she does not make a sound when he sends her flying and she hits the ground, her mouth filling with sand – and she's sure she heard something break.

He's not smiling when he grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks her up, his eyes are not sparkling with lust when he tears off what little clothes she's wearing and throws her back down; and she's not screaming, but for the first time in years she's fighting.

She kicks and pushes and scratches, but he's stronger.

He always has been, and it's not long before she feels the skin break under his teeth and everything fades to black.

* * *

Sometimes she forgets herself.

_Patrick would never do this_, she says. _Patrick would never talk to me like this. Patrick would never kill innocents like this. Patrick would have said he loves me_.

_Patrick is the man you'll never be_.

She used to bite her lip and wait for his explosion every time the words flew from her mouth without her thinking first.

But not anymore.

Now she meets his eyes, and tells him. _Patrick is the man you'll never be_.

One night, instead of hitting her, he grins, wide and mad, rubies dripping from his teeth. "And his wife is the woman _you'll_ never be."

* * *

He decides they should go to France.

_(To the Revolution, and it's beautiful._

_The hungered cries in the streets are turning into blood-curdling shouts; the discontent is turning to fury and the welling cries for bread, _bread_, are turning into _blood, blood, we want blood_._

_He has always loved the fall of an empire; the end of an era._

_The nobility is proud and arrogant – he loves that too. Softened by years and years of easy living, by the absence of war and desperation and blood. The absence of destruction – it makes you weak, he knows, it makes you useless and soft._

_So he takes his little golden and emerald pet there, at the end of spring, the beginning of a tortuously hot summer, in the year of 1789. He dresses her in pastels and lace, with soft curling hair and rouged lips, but he himself makes sure to wear the guises of army, to pretend to be the civilized kind of nomad, because he knows what's coming. _

_And because of that he takes it upon himself to tie a red ribbon around her throat on evenings, at the exact place where her neck would be severed if he left her behind for the crowds – and thinks that maybe he should. Thinks that the red line around her throat should be liquid, gushing.)_

"Do you love me?" she asks him, and the crowds are growing outside the gates of their _palais_.

Of course he doesn't, and she pretends not to care. But once he's left the room she weeps.

(_Because Teresa, oh, Teresa is a woman who desires to be loved_.)

_Desired_, she tells herself, and stands, setting down her book, gathering her skirts and following him to their chambers.

"Is there anything else that you wanted to ask?" he sounds tired, and her gaze briefly darts to the small wooden device sitting on the windowsill.

She swallows, halts for a moment, stares at him. Tick tock, she hears the clock tick away the seconds. And then it dawns on her, his fear, his endless wait for something that terrifies him – _tick tock, he is a clock_.

_He is a clock_.

She pushes him hard against the wall, rips his tunic and bites more than she kisses, placing her hand against his chest, feeling the frantic beating of his heart. _There_, she thinks, and x marks the spot.

* * *

(The next day the peasants storm the Bastille and she dances in the streets, her bare feet cut by stones and glass, and she spins and laughs at the blood red sky, wondering if Patrick can hear her.)

* * *

Rain is pouring down on her like sheets of silver knives, but she keeps walking through the woods with her head held high and her hair sticking to her forehead like a crown.

_Today I am baptized_, she thinks, closing her eyes and welcoming the almost painful onslaught of water. _I died and was brought back into the world to live as a broken doll_. _Then I cut my own strings and rose from my ashes once again_.

She was once a girl with a woman's name. Trying to play games she didn't understand the rules of. Hoping to become a part of something she dreaded.

Now she can only be a monster with a woman's name.

Now she can only return and claim what is hers.

**IV.**

She looks at him, and sees a fallen angel. Beautiful and wicked, with clipped wings and a crumpled halo, a sinner who abandoned his light in the quest for blood.

She looks at him, and her heart flutters in her chest, because she remembers the man with the endless pain in his eyes and the love she had given him.

She wants to take it back.

* * *

"I thought I'd never see you again."

It is only half a lie – there were times when she thought she would die without having truly lived first, taking with her in the afterlife only the traces of a gaping red smile on her neck. She had once believed that she could never escape her mad, gilded cage.

He smiles, soft and affectionate, and she feels something akin to hope starting to swell inside her. She promptly reprimands herself, _look at him with his eyes like dying flames_. _A man who wants only death and vengeance – nothing more, nothing less_.

Certainly not her.

He didn't back then, he doesn't now. Somehow, It's become easier to accept this. Perhaps there was one good thing Red John taught her after all.

"Me too," he breathes, lips ghosting over her cheek. "I missed you so much, Teresa."

She sighs, and turns her eyes to the ceiling, watches the shadows cast by the candlelight dance without a care in the world. "I missed you too," she says, and means it.

He snakes an arm around her waist, pulls her closer against him. The cotton sheets feel rough against her skin, nothing like the fine silk she had become used to over a hundred years. She presses her lips to his, sighs against his mouth.

He tastes of ashes and tea.

(For some reason, it feels wrong – there should be blood and wine on his tongue. There should be death and lust, sin and fear; not pain and feigned elegance – determination.)

"What did you do, all these years?" she asks him, slightly breathless from his attentions as he lavishes her body with kisses. "Did you...?"

"No." He shakes his head, pauses for a moment, his mouth hovering over her skin. Then, he resumes. "I didn't. But I've made progress."

"This is good," she gasps, tilts her head back when she feels him gently pushing her legs apart. "I- you'll find him, one day. I know you will." _Maybe if you're buried in the same ground_.

"Let's not talk about this now," he says, his face level with hers in a flash. Blue eyes boring into green, lies looking down at lies. Master and disciple. Disciple and master.

It's hard to know who is who, in this entanglement between the sheets.

She decides not to concern herself with it for now, but she will remember this moment of self-doubt and guilt for the rest of her life.

* * *

She smells death on him.

She grins with her teeth and quirks an elegant eyebrow, eyes falling indolently on the golden-haired man lounging on the plush green sofa, and his smile, oh God, his smile–

Teresa feels her world lurch. He is the perfect culmination of the man who killed her and crafted her out of blood and fire and an ancient curse, the man she thought she loved and loathed. He has his haunted aura still around him, clinging to his skin like sweat, but his face is different; that smile is all Red John, all fanged, predatory charm.

He's so much more beautiful now. And so much more _broken_.

_A lost little boy wielding a hunter's smile_, she thinks. _I could tear you apart at the seams if I wished it_.

But she does stop to think that maybe she is the lost little girl playing dangerous after all.

* * *

You can have anything you want, so long as you desire it enough.

And Teresa, oh, Teresa, is a sheep in wolf's clothing who wants her heart back.


End file.
